Lot's Wife & Daughters

Let’s begin by admitting that I have never really gotten why Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt. I know the “why,” as in why it happened. She disobeyed God when He told them to flee Sodom and Gomorra and to not look back. So, what did she do, she looks back, thus being turned into a pillar of salt. The part I have never gotten is, why salt? Why didn’t God just strike her dead or bring some other sort of consequence on her. Being turned into a pillar of salt just seems weird to me. Maybe to figure this one out I should go back to the “what happened.”

Lot and his family were living in the city of Sodom. Now, Sodom was a very wicked and sinful city. It was so corrupt that God had said He was going to destroy the city. Lot was not like the other men in the city, so God chose to spare him and his family. Lot tried to warn the men who were to be married to his daughters of what was to come, but they didn’t believe him and were destroyed with everyone else in the city. God had sent angels to deliver this message to Lot and to get them out of the city.

With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.” When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them. As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains of you will be swept away!” Genesis 19:15-17

Lot and his family didn’t want to go to the mountains though because they thought they couldn’t survive there, so they made a deal to go to a different city instead. The angel said to go to this town quickly because he couldn’t do anything until they reached it.

They were clearly told to flee and not look back. God was sparing their lives and saving them from total destruction. Why would they want to look back at what was a terrible place? For some reason we tend to do the same thing, looking back at the bad places that God has rescued us from. Maybe it is the sin nature in us, or the fact that we tend to want to hold on to things, or not wanting to change even when we know we need to, whatever the reason is, we do it, we look back. We don’t have to do it though; we have a choice to look back or not.  

Lot’s wife did it too, she looked back. God had safely brought them to a place of safety and told them not to look back. She did it though and suffered the consequence of being entrapped in the same destruction that was happening to the place she had fled from. As God was raining down burning sulfur on the cities, Lot’s wife looked back, saw what was happening, and was consumed in the same fate.    

To answer the “Why salt?” question I had to do some research. From what I found, it often associated salt with brimstone. It says that the cities were destroyed by burning brimstone. Also, in that area it is common to see salt mounds that sort of look like stalagmites. So, if it was raining brimstone and if she was consumed by this then she could turn to a pillar of salt. Now I will admit that I still don’t fully get this. I may need someone way more intelligent to explain it to me, or it will be a question to ask when I get to heaven.

Well, Lot’s daughters were not much better than their mom. After they had fled to Zoar, and Lot’s wife was turned to a pillar of salt, they moved on to living in the mountains. The daughters, felling isolated and hopeless about not being able to produce heirs to continue on the family line, devised a plan to get their father drunk and then sleep with him. Poor Lot, like he hadn’t been through enough already, now he is being raped by his daughters. Both daughters became pregnant and gave birth to sons. Their son’s were the fathers of the Moabites and Ammonites, two groups of people who would later cause problems. Like their mom, Lot’s daughters made some very bad decisions. They disobeyed God and it came with consequences.